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      • American War of Independence

        A Child of the Revolution

        William Henry Harrison and His World, 1773-1798

        by Hendrik Booraem V (author)

        The American Revolution gave birth to a nation, forever changed the course of political thought, and shattered and transformed the lives of the citizens of the new republic. An iconic figure of the Old Northwest, governor, Indian fighter, general in the War of 1812, and ultimately president, William Henry Harrison was one such citizen. The son of a rich Virginia planter, Harrison saw his family mansion burned and his relatives scattered. In the war’s aftermath, he rejected his inherited beliefs about slavery, religion, and authority, and made an idealistic commitment to serve the United States.This led him to the United States Army, which at the time was a sorry collection of drunks and derelicts who were about to be reorganized in the face of a serious conflict with the Indian nations of the Ohio valley. Author Hendrik Booraem follows Harrison as Gen. Anthony Wayne attempted to rebuild the army into a fighting force, first in Pittsburgh, then in Cincinnati and the forests of the Northwest. A voracious reader of history and the classics, Harrison became fascinated with the archaeology and ethnology of the region, even as his military service led to a dramatic showdown with the British army, which had secretly been aiding the Indians.By age 21, Harrison had achieved almost everything he had set his heart on—adventure, recognition, intellectual stimulation, and even a small measure of power. He was the youngest man to put his name to the Treaty of Greenville, which ended Indian control over Ohio lands and opened the way for development and statehood. He even won a bride: Anna Symmes, the Eastern-educated daughter of pioneer landowner John Cleves Symmes. When Congress voted to downsize the army, 25-year-old Harrison, now a family man, fumbled for a second career.Drawing on a variety of primary documents, Booraem re-creates military life as Lieutenant Harrison experienced it—a life of duels, discipline, rivalries, hardships, baffling encounters with the natives and social relations between officers and men, military and civilians, and men and women.

      • American War of Independence

        The Battle of Lake Erie and Its Aftermath

        A Reassessment

        by David Curtis Skaggs (editor)

        Experts weigh in on a pivotal engagement in the War of 1812Few naval battles in American history have left a more enduring impression on America’s national consciousness than the Battle of Lake Erie, September 10, 1813. Master Commandant Oliver Hazard Perry’s battle flag emblazoned with the message “Don’t Give Up the Ship,” now enshrined at the U.S. Naval Academy, has become a naval maxim. His succinct after-action report—“We have met the enemy and they are ours”—constitutes one of the more memorable battle summaries in American history.This splendid collection celebrates the bicentennial of the American victory with a review of the battle and its consequences. The volume is divided into three sections. The first deals with “Military Operations” in the upper Great Lakes, 1812–14, and provides an overview of the War of 1812 in the Old Northwest and western Upper Canada. The second, “Consequences,” assesses the long-term impact of this campaign upon the Native Americans and Euro-Americans who lived in the region and three individuals whose lives were changed by the American recovery of the upper lakes in 1813. The final section, “Memory,” examines two ways the United States keeps the legacy of its first squadron-to-squadron victory alive by maintaining the fragile battle flag that flew on Perry’s flagships and by sailing the replica of US Brig Niagara on the Great Lakes and the East Coast.Collectively these essays allow the general reader, the military history enthusiast, and the professional historian to take a fresh look at this significant naval engagement and its impact on subsequent historical events.

      • American War of Independence

        Fort Laurens, 1778-79

        Revolutionary War In Ohio

        by Thomas Pieper (author)

        While the main action of the Revolution swirled along the Atlantic seaboard. Ohio was a no man’s land between the Colonists’ Fort Pitt and the British Fort Detroit. A campaign to neutralize Detroit and win the allegiance of the Indians in Ohio was instigated by General Washington in 1778, and in the fall of that year Fort Laurens was erected on the banks of the Tuscarawas River as the planned first step to secure the Western Frontier. But fortunes of war, logistics, and supplies, to say nothing of reconsiderations by the higher command, doomed the venture to failure. Fort Laurens remains the deepest—indeed, the only—Revolutionary War military settlement in what is now the state of Ohio.The brief history of Fort Laurens is a story of courage mixed with confusion, of bravery and hardship, of a little Valley Forge on the western side of the struggling nation. The long winter in which an ill-equipped handful of men scrounged for food and withstood attack to maintain their outpost in the wilderness is an undeservedly neglected part of the Revolutionary War story and a thrilling beginning to the Ohio story. This book is the first complete account of the episode, drawing on all the documentary evidence available and placing it in the context of the larger struggle for independence.Today the site of Fort Laurens is a state historical monument with a visitors’ center and museum visited by thousands each year. It is also the scene of an archaeological dig which is more firmly establishing the outlines and structure of the original fort as well as confirming and clarifying the historical evidence. Fort Laurens brings this part of the story up to date, and new maps help the reader appreciate the scope of the Fort Laurens campaign and the odds it faced.

      • American War of Independence

        Washington's Partisan War

        by Mark Kwasny (author)

        “This solid, workmanlike monograph, based on impressive research and laced with first rate maps…gives the reader a greater appreciation of the performance of the states and their leaders in the northern theater of the war. And it shows that Washington was flexible in his use of the militia, which at times surprised him with its turnout and its performance.”—Reviews in American History“Everyone knows that George Washington distrusted the militia….He has been quoted so often on the topic that even specialists do not realize that Washington also saw virtues in militiamen and used them with real skill." --Mark V. Kwasny

      • American War of Independence

        Neptune's Militia

        The Frigate South Carolina during the American Revolution

        by James A. Lewis (author)

        The virtues of the citizen-soldier are prominent in the history of the American Revolution, but less attention has been given to the citizen-sailor. However, there were state navies during the war, the seaward equivalent of the state militias, and the state of South Carolina put to sea the most important of these.Under the leadership of Commodore Alexander Gillon the South Carolina navy secured the services of the largest warship under any American’s command, the frigate South Carolina. Built in Holland and designed to combine speed with firepower, this frigate’s most notable achievement was the capture of the British Bahamas in 1782 in the only American military maneuver to seize and hold foreign territory outside the borders of the Thirteen Colonies. With success, however, came controversy. At the end of the war, the South Carolina was chased to the ground by three British warships and captured. The state of South Carolina struggled for seventy years to honor the financial obligations incurred in operating the frigate.

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